Smash Bros. Creator Talks Kid Icarus Uprising

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Masahiro Sakurai opens up about Kid Icarus Uprising. Why the silly tone? And how did the project come about in the first place? Read on!

By Audrey Drake

During a recently released edition of Iwata Asks, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata sat down with Super Smash Bros. developer Masahiro Sakurai to discuss his latest creation, Kid Icarus Uprising. The interview began with some discussion of how Uprising came about in the first place - which apparently stemmed from Iwata's desire for Sakurai to work on something original.

"After Super Smash Bros. Brawl came out for Wii, I didn't think the right course was to make a game in the same series right away," Iwata said. "So I said, 'Let's do something a little different.' Also, the new hardware, the Nintendo 3DS, was coming out, so to appeal to consumers, I wanted [Sakurai] to make something the in-house Nintendo development team wouldn't. I made those two requests."

Considering these criteria, as well as various other factors, Sakurai decided to "revive a stalled series from the Nintendo lineup" for a "shooting game with air battles and land battles." Given that Kid Icarus features an angel who can't fly as its central protagonist, and how popular the character became thanks to his inclusion in Brawl, the choice was obvious - and the result was Kid Icarus Uprising.

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It was also important to Sakurai to make Uprising a game more geared toward hardcore gamers. "At first, I thought a lot of light games - like Touch Generations - for casual users would come out for Nintendo 3DS, so I wanted to make a solid game for gamers," Sakurai said. "When it comes to the essence of the game, I want people to play hard!"

One result from this devotion to playing hard was the innovative difficulty system Sakurai and his Project Sora team implemented in Uprising - the Fiend's Cauldron. The Cauldron allows players to bet hearts (the in-game currency) for the chance to play a level on a higher difficulty setting. The rewards you reap are higher (more hearts and better weapon drops) - but if you can't pull it off, you could actually end up losing hearts in the process. "It's like you place your own skill or the abilities of your weapons and a degree of difficulty on the scales of a balance and make a bet," he said.

Of course, the flip side of the Cauldron is that in addition to providing ample challenge for more experienced gamers, it also allows less capable players to enjoy Uprising to the fullest. "We wanted to make it so not just advanced players would be able to enjoy the essence of the game, but so that good players and not-so-good players - anyone, really - can play it," Sakurai said. "After all, players exhibit quite a range of skills. Addressing the challenges presented by games is fun. I think that in the end, risk and return is linked with those challenges. By asking the players how they want to bet, they set challenges for themselves."

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Sakurai also touched on the reasoning behind making Uprising quite so light-hearted and silly. He recalled that when the original Kid Icarus for NES first came out, it was right around the time that games like The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Dragon Quest, and other, more serious titles found a home on the NES. Icarus set itself apart with its goofy tone - something Sakurai remembers fondly. "While the other games made a serious impression of fighting evil, Kid Icarus appeared to give us silly impressions," he said. "Its setting was Greek mythology, but credit cards appeared!"

He went on to elaborate on how important this lighter tone really is to the heart of the Icarus franchise. "That kind of random stuff was the fiber of Kid Icarus," he said. "We put a lot of those elements into Kid Icarus: Uprising as well. But we didn't just put in a lot of eggplants as a sort of homage because the Eggplant Wizard shows up. Rather, while treating the story with care, we tried not to get too serious. The main hero isn't, for example, on a quest of self-discovery."

If you're still on the fence about Pit's latest adventure, check out IGN Executive Editor Rich George's full Kid Icarus Uprising review - and be sure to keep an eye on IGN 3DS in the coming weeks for more new footage of Pit and friends in action.